


Closer

by Ambivalency



Category: Fight Club (1999)
Genre: F/F, F/M, POV Marla, POV Narrator, before it all started crumbling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-24 16:16:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8378977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambivalency/pseuds/Ambivalency
Summary: "You know, if you want something, you should ask for it".I can feel my face burning. I don't meet his gaze.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to the Nine Inch Nails song.

I still dream about Marla some nights.  
Other nights I dream about Tyler.  
Then there are the ones with Marla and Tyler.  
The thing is, in the dream all of it feels easy, it’s when I wake up that I start having conflicting emotions.  
Sometimes I can't stand either of them.

I try and fail not to look as sullen as I feel. Apparently I'm an open book.

Tyler studies me, bewildered and amused at the same time. “Are you jealous of her?”

My heart jumps. “What?”

“Marla”

I scoff. “Why would I be?”.

Tyler gives me a look. “You know, if you want something, you should ask for it.”

I can feel my face burning. I don’t meet his gaze, fixing my eyes somewhere around his collar bones instead. He’s wearing a hot pink v-neck. I can see his nipples through the shirt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” I say in a monotone voice.

“Sure you don’t”, he turns around, searching for something in our kitchen cupboards.

His jeans are hanging low on his hips, a tan sliver of skin visible between the hem of his shirt and his pants. I wonder if he's wearing underwear.

 

The next time Marla comes over I don’t even hear her voice, all I can hear through the thin wall is him.

*

That morning she sees it for the first time, the thick pink mark on the back of his hand.

“Who did this to you?” Marla demands, gripping his wrist. “Guy or girl?”

He pulls away, cradling his hand. “Why does it matter?”

A guy then.

She can’t accuse him of cheating because they’re not together. Maybe he’s cheating on someone else with her. Maybe that’s why he’s so distant and irritable in the mornings. Like he regrets it, every time.

What she doesn’t understand is why he keeps coming back.

She watches him caress the scar, like it’s something precious and not something horrible.

 

Whatever, she doesn’t have time for his hot and cold shit today.

*

“The other night you said I should ask if I want something.”

“Yeah?” Tyler licks his lips.

“I want you. Can I have you?”

He pulls me into an embrace.

 

After, he lights a cigarette, and it reminds me of the night of our second meeting.

“Are you going to tell Marla?” I ask.

He shrugs. “We’re not a couple”

As I sit there, as close to him as possible on the dirty mattress, I can’t help but hope.

*

The next time she spends the night he’s more polite in the morning. Still uncomfortable but not hostile, like he often is.

“Do you love him?” Marla chances, since he seems to be in one of his better moods today. And she's curious.

He looks like a deer in headlights. A guilty deer. Did he think she was stupid? She rolls her eyes.

“Anyway, don't beat yourself up on my account, I don't care what you do, or who"

He’s just staring at her.

“I don't want to talk about it” he says at last. He’s looking at the mouth shaped scar again.

He lets her, _asks her to_ , do all sorts of things to him. But she doubts he’d ever ask her to do something like that.

Something permanent.

 

Marla isn't sure if she's supposed to envy or pity whoever’s made that kind of commitment to _Tyler Durden_.


End file.
